Quill pig is another name for a porcupine. Porcupines are unattractive and unpopular, but, as animals go, and unlike eagles, elephants, and donkeys, they are reasonably harmless good neighbors that mind their own business. Here's where we can talk about being good neighbors and why it's eternally important.

Thursday, November 20, 2014

[King Saul of Israel] took two oxen and cut them
into pieces and sent the messengers to carry them throughout Israel with this
message: “This is what will happen to the oxen of anyone who refuses to follow
Saul and Samuel into battle!” And the LORD made the people afraid of Saul’s
anger, and all of them came out together as one. (1 Sam 11:7)

King Saul was the answer to apostate Israel’s
prayers for a king who “will govern us and go out before us and fight our
battles” (1 Sam 8:20). Whatever his faults later in life, and they were legion,
here he starts out well. He sacrifices (in the secular sense) his own oxen to
symbolize his own dedication to the cause and announces that he will lead—not
follow, not send, but lead—his people into battle. He demonstrates true
leadership. In fact, he was in this sense a leader all his life. He led his men
in pursuit of David, and he was still, at the age of seventy, leading his men
in battle on Mount Gilboa when he was killed.

Subsequent kings both good and bad followed
Saul’s example of leadership: Evil King Ahab and not-so-evil King Jehoshaphat
led their men on a fool’s errand to Ramoth, for which Ahab paid with his life (1
Kg 22). Righteous King Josiah also led his men on a fool’s errand, this one
against Pharaoh Neco and paid with his life (1 Chr 35:20-24). Fool’s errands
though those were, the kings who led their men led their men.

We last saw the same leadership in this country
when President GeorgeWashington led an army—not against foreign invaders, but against
his own subjects—to end the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794. Since then, American
presidents have followed the example of Saul’s successor, a man after God’s own
heart, who after becoming king preferred at least once to take his ease at home
while his underlings fought and died (1 Sam 11).

The transition of government from servant to
master seems to be inevitable. In 1776 people formed a government supposedly
based on the notion that “all men are created equal … endowed by their creator
with … unalienable rights” and that people had the right to alter or abolish
governments that trampled on those rights. By 1794 the same man who had
famously signed the Declaration led a detachment to prevent people from
altering a government they felt violated their rights.

So is government servant or master? Specifically,
what about the people we today call “public servants”?

In the aftermath of the shooting of a state
trooper and the subsequent manhunt, which was orders of magnitude greater than
what would have followed the murder of a mundane, I read the following, written
by a patriotic conservative:

Let’s face it—if one of us “ordinary” citizens
gets murdered, it’s not as significant to society as a whole, as the murder of
an authority figure like a policeman or a politician.

Who is the master and who is the servant here?
Would the parallel on the plantation be “if the master gets murdered, it’s not
as significant for the plantation as the murder of a slave,” or would it be “if
a slave gets murdered, it’s not as significant for the plantation as the murder
of the master”?

You can’t have it both ways, folks. Either
politicians and policemen are servants, in which case their demise is
comparable to that of the slave, or they are masters, and to call them servants is dishonest at best.

If you’re still not convinced that those who
“protect and serve” consider themselves our masters, consider this tidbit from
an article about how our “servants” are being trained these
days. I think the mundanes described here can be forgiven for thinking that
they were being “served” by Snowball and Napoleon, the pigs from Orwell’s Animal Farm:

A 2007 study found that 49 percent of
police departments surveyed used active-duty military personnel, including
special-forces troops, to train their SWAT teams. One of the teams competing in
Urban Shield was from the US Marine Corps. When the training event kicked off
Saturday morning, I sat in an Amtrak train in Oakland as they came through in
combat gear shouting at the pretend civilians to “put your fucking hands up!
Anyone who puts their hands down will get fucking shot! Don’t fucking move!”
Even though they were just shooting little plastic bullets, my heart was
pounding. Afterward, I asked a Marine why they trained in exercises designed
for police. “To learn different tactics,” he said. “You have some of the best
guys out there, and they give their input and we take that back with us and
teach our Marines.”

So the most powerful
military in the world is taking cues from cops? “It’s interesting that we’ve
had a lot of conversations on the militarization of the police, but you could
make the same argument for the police-ization of the military,” said Nelson,
the Urban Shield spokesman. The modern military is in the business of
occupation, he said, of getting governments up and running. When the military
fights insurgents, it is “almost acting like a police force.”

If, dear reader,
the words spoken on the train were those of someone serving God by serving “society
as a whole,” I’m not interested in knowing, let alone serving, that god. And if
that’s the only god there is, there’s no good god, and anything we do to keep
from getting on the bad side of whatever god is there, far from being virtue,
is a survival tactic comparable to a skunk’s scent. Notice that these are not
“a few bad apples at the bottom.” This is how our “servants” are being trained to treat us. They are agents of
occupation who (rightly) regard us as potential rebels. They are in fact,
self-conscious “authority figures,” not servants.

I’d also like to pick up
on the idea that it is “society as a whole” that is “served” by our
increasingly unified police-and-military armada.
This is akin to the idea that “a state has the right to protect itself.” Here
we have the collectivist idea that “society” has rights that transcend
individual rights. That is, an abstraction—something that lacks mass, volume,
and texture—has rights that tangible, sentient beings made in the image of God do
not have. This was the idea that Orwell was parodying, guided as he was by
common grace to see that evil people hide their true motives behind warm and
fuzzy abstractions.

The state is the
deadliest warm and fuzzy abstraction known to man. In the name of making a
better life for “society as a whole,” it has made life miserable for billions
of flesh-and-blood people. Meanwhile, politicians are immune from prosecution
for the harm caused by their policies, and police are immune from prosecution
when they fail to protect. Both groups are certainly immune from prosecution
for acting like masters and treating us as slaves.

As a thumbnail view of
politics, I’ll take 1 Samuel 8 over Romans 13 any day.

If indeed the life of a
politician or policeman is more precious than that of a mundane, then Snowball
and Napoleon were right and Jefferson was wrong: “All men are created equal,”
but some people are more equal than others. On the other hand, if all men are
created in the image of God, all murders are equally evil.

Wednesday, November 5, 2014

I usually find
myself offering answers to questions no one is asking, so I was pleasantly
surprised, at a wedding reception no less, to receive the following question in
writing:

In God’s restraining the sinfulness of man
and to keep him from totally destroying himself, does he raise up nations and or
empires to restrain men and to keep order in the world? In other words, does he
raise up nations such as Rome, England, and the US etc., to be world cops?

This question
requires (and probably has received) a book-length answer, but the best I can
do here is a short summary of what such a book would say.

The
presuppositions I see behind this question are that man is sinful, that God
restrains that sinfulness “to keep [man] from totally destroying himself,” that
he raises up nations and empires, that we can know in at least some general
sense why he raises them up, and that empires keep order. I agree with the
first three at least enough not to contest them here. The last two are not so clearly
cut.

Why God does
things are not necessarily for us to know. “Who has known the mind of the
Lord?” (Ro 11:34). Did that parking space near the entrance open up so you
could park in it, or so you could leave it for someone who needed it more? I
see no way of answering questions about such minor things definititively, so I
cannot say for sure why God raises up
and then abases empires. But how God
raises up empires is beyond dispute: he makes them victorious in battle over
societies in which “the sinfulness of man” may
or may not be more evident (“Should you be silent while the wicked destroy
people who are more righteous than they?” [Hab 1:13]). And given that the
victors get to write the history books, in which they always and understandably
defend their moral right to victory, I would have to say that from a human
standpoint, empires are always the product of might makes right.

Which brings
us to the presupposition that empires keep order. The truth of that statement
depends crucially on the definition of order.
Mao’s and Stalin’s empires, and ISIS today, all have had order of a sort, but
I’m sure that sort of order is not what my interlocutor had in mind. He’s a
conservative, so I don’t know how he defines order (and suspect I would
disagree somewhat if I did), so I’ll use my definition here: a society has
order to the degree that people’s bodies, property, trust, and reputations are
safe from violence (Ex 20:13-16).

By that
definition, some empires are worse than others. But because all empires—all
governments, for that matter—are established by armed conflict (the ultimate
violation of people and their property, usually involving some form of deceit)
and maintained by taxation (systematic violation of property), I have a hard
time saying that any are good, or even saying that some are better than others.
But some are clearly worse than others.

So the question
I was asked essentially boils down to this: Does God give some less-bad people
power to keep the more-bad people from doing worse things? As I said, God’s
ways are inscrutable, so I won’t speak to his purposes, but I will at least
hypothesize that yes, when less-bad people are in power, things are (Surprise!)
less bad than they are when more-bad people are in power. So less-bad empires
are not as bad a more-bad empires. But beyond that tautology I cannot go.

My
interlocutor is probably an exception, but the question when most Americans ask
it is not an information question but a rhetorical question, in effect a
statement that empires are needed to keep order, the US empire is not as bad as
the enemy empire du jour is, and therefore to question the wisdom of American
wars, let alone the legitimacy of the empire itself, is sheer foolishness.

I would reply that
since all empires begin and maintain their existence through at least the
threat of violence, and since everyone is convinced both that his own morals
are better than his neighbors’ and that violence for the cause of a “good”
empire is justified, the moral tenor of any empire is probably more apparent to
that empire’s enemies than to its friends. Empires, like politicians in
general, are being most truthful when pointing out their opponents’ sins. So we
need to temper our enthusiasm for Uncle Sam’s empire, even if we reap tangible
benefits from it; those benefits may be stolen goods.

Conservatives
and liberals all believe that order can come about and be maintained only if
some people, government, are allowed to violate it. That is, while nationhood
and empire are not sufficient for order to exist—some nations and empires are
chaotic—they are necessary. The American empire, so both sides say, is the best
there has ever been; we are “the indispensible nation.” So American imperialism
is needed to bring order to the world, and without America, the world will be
hell from pole to pole. Again, let me suggest that it is for God first, those
who suffer the ill effects of American government policy second, and American
beneficiaries last to weigh our government’s policies and render a moral
judgment.

I agree that
unless man’s sinfulness is restrained, he will destroy himself. I also agree
that God has designed structures that effectively restrain that sinfulness. But
I think I know better ways to restrain sin than nations and empires, with their
politicians, hearings, commissioners, lawyers, judges, and, most importantly,
their uniforms, guns, and bombs, and essentially carte blanche to use them.

The first
sin-restraining structure is self-interest. God has built into the world the
amazing mechanism of self-sacrifice. Athletes, musicians, artists, craftsmen,
and entrepreneurs are the first examples that come to mind of people who have
to sacrifice their short-term interests for their long-term interests. The
ultimate example of this, of course, is Jesus, who was himself the ultimate
sacrifice: “He was willing to die a shameful death on the cross because of the
joy he knew would be his afterward. Now he is seated in the place of highest
honor beside God's throne in heaven” (Heb 12:2).

The second
sin-restraining structure is the family. To see how the family restrains sin,
let’s take the common sin of male lust. Everyone knows a man can easily become
attracted to women other than his wife. Adultery is a sin. How does the family
act to restrain this sin? The most common way is through incentives: if you
want your home to be a pleasant place to be in, you make sure your wife has no
fear of other women, whether live, on paper, or online.

The family also
acts to restrain anger, another sin: if you want your home to be pleasant, you
need to treat your family with respect. You can choose either serving your
family and living happily or sinning against them and reaping reciprocated
disrespect (violent or otherwise), disdain, or even abandonment. The same
dynamics operate to some degree for wives and children, and the rules seem to
be the same for both Christian believers and for nonbelievers. So the family
offers incentives for people out of their
own self-interest to restrain their own sins, and when that doesn’t work, verbal
and even physical restraint might enter the picture.

The third sin-restraining
structure is the church, the other covenantal institution, which is supposed to
be the ultimate extended family. It is the church that is supposed to care for
those in need, provide avenues of service for those in abundance, and shape the
values we take home and into the neighborhood. Again, while a good church makes
provision for imperfections and even for sins, either you play by the rules or
you’re out. Like the family, the church will provide incentives for
self-restraint.

The fourth sin-restraining
structure is what I call the neighborhood. (Others might call it the market or civil society.) Unlike the family and church, the neighborhood
requires no covenant. It is here that we interact with our neighbors, no matter
who they may be. Some of them we will only see in passing, with others we will
exchange money for goods and services, and with others we will converse and
perhaps share meals or enter into closer relationships. It is in the
neighborhood that we find the firepower needed to resist the violence that
conservatives and liberals think of when they think of restraining sin.

While the
statist view is that some people have to be free to violate others’ property
through taxation and violate their freedom through whatever laws they make with
the intention of the common good. An empire says, “Do as I say or I’ll kill you.”
I would suggest that to expect someone who violates your property and threatens
your body (again, often on the basis of false claims) to protect your body,
property, reputation, and trust is counterintuitive at best. There is nothing
about you that appeals to the empire’s self-interest except your ability to
contribute taxes and cannon fodder. The more protection an empire actually
offers you, or the more recalcitrant you are about contributing, the more of a
burden you are.

By contrast, ,
a neighborhood-based society would offer protection for a price, and simply not
protect those who choose to go it alone, purchase their protection from others,
or not obey the rules. A neighbor—whether a commercial operation or a
prospective mate—says, “Let’s make a deal.” It’s in his self-interest to see
the deal go through and to keep your business away from the competition through
good service for as long as possible.

To have the
opportunity to choose from protection plans from Walmart, Target, State Farm, Winn-Dixie,
Toyota, Nestlé, Chick-fil-A, the local mosque, and God knows who else—plans
that could cover life, auto, theft, fire, stupidity, illness, travel,
transportation, unemployment, retirement, invasion by ISIS, and dozens of
things I wouldn’t think of, either comprehensively or piecemeal—sounds to me
like a much better situation than to be forced into a one-size-fits-all program
offered by a state that considers itself the paragon of virtue because it
allows me to vote every year or two or four or six for the people who will
supposedly set, administer, and adjudicate the programs. Obviously, I wouldn’t
qualify for some such programs, and others would be out of my price range, but
somebody somewhere would be trying to put his kids through college by telling
people like me, “If you’ll pay your bills and obey the rules, here’s what we
can do for you.” In other words, “If you’ll restrain your sin, we’ll see that
you live well.”

They would be
wooing people who would tell them in return, “If you don’t deliver on your
promises, I’ll go elsewhere.” Again: it’s in your self-interest to restrain
your sin.

It was the
vision of that kind of society, a society whose prosperity comes from mutual
service, not from the power that flows from the barrel of a gun, that first got
me really excited about being a Christian—and that was nine years after I had first
committed my life to Jesus. It is through the power of the Holy Spirit that
people can fully live in a society like that, and I would think that showing
people how the Bible calls people to develop the kind of character that
succeeds in such a society (and promises the help of the
Holy Spirit in that development) would be a much more effective means of
evangelism than, for example, fighting to keep certain kinds of sex education
out of schools paid for by people who want their kids to go through those
programs, or fighting to keep Social Security payments from going to the
homosexual partners or plural wives of people forced to pay into it.

If in time and
on earth “the time will come when all the earth will be filled, as the waters
fill the sea, with an awareness of the glory of the LORD” (Hab 2:14), my guess
is that it will look more like the neighborhood I just described than any
society held together by politicians, police, and military.

Since then
I’ve tried to share that vision with anyone who will listen and get them to
join me in a project that will take years, if not centuries, to complete. I’m
not sure why, but I’ve found very few Christians who are interested.